That has got to be one of the timeliness answers to a question I've ever seen on here. Thanks!
Yeah, I just saw the article earlier the same day...it was just...fresh.
The bloatware sucks but it takes <30 minutes after install to remove / disable all of it.
A Windows version becomes considered "good" the exact moment a next version is released. No sooner, no later. Those are the rules.
It's fine for Windows, I guess. They've made a bunch of UI improvements that I actually kind of liked. But they still try and force you to setup a Microsoft account when you install. And telemetry is hardly consensual. I think I turned off what I could by rooting around for privacy settings, but it still sends things like crash reports without asking.
I don't trust it. Just use it for games.
Or don't even use it for games. Thanks to recent developments users finally have a choice.
Since the question implies a change of state - I'm going to go with a no.
I have been using Windows 11 pro since it came out and it's fine. I'm not sure why windows is obsessed with trying to replace their older, functional menus with the new style settings apps (which usually just lead back to the old style ones) but I never get reinstalled bloat, ads, or anything remotely like people are complaining about.
For reference I do powershell for a living and use ArchLinux at work, and have windows 11 and arch machines at home, but use windows the most at home.
Not until they bring back the “never combine” taskbar option. What a dumb idea to omit it for years and not expect push back. You had one job Microsoft.
For me the "can't believe they got rid of this" was removing the ability to move the taskbar to either side or to the top.
Remember when windows let you have a SQUARE taskbar in the middle of the screen? How far backwards we've managed to come.
Square taskbar? On which version?
Windows 98, lol. Way way back.
Nooooo so the task bar icons represent applications instead of individual windows? Ugh that's gonna bug me...
Yes 🤦🏻♂️ if you have 16 spreadsheets open on your 16k humongous ultra duper wide, it will collapse all sixteen windows into one tiny icon on the taskbar.
I am using this (enabled with ViveTool) and they need to give us an option to standardize the width. It's so fuckin annoying to have your taskbar move around when you change tabs or songs. It's also annoying that short window titles get crunched down to a tiny button.
Oh man, I never even knew they had taken that away. I noped out the moment I heard they had removed the Quick Launch toolbar, but if not for that, the forced combining or tasks would have done the trick.
Yeah there was unofficial explorer patch that was available but I just felt like throwing my toys out my pram. In all seriousness, if it’s M$ I expect nothing but the best out of the box, if it’s tinkering I’m after I’m going to main my many linux boxes. For farming all my , erm research activities, you’d think they give a little back. But nooooo…
Depends on what you mean by decent.
For privacy it's shit, it collects a bunch of data that's sent to MS. It also serves text ads on the lock screen, which might annoy you.
They also push their own products too much, like Bing AI and Edge, and sometimes an update can mess with the default apps, wich is annoying.
If you don't care about those things it's fine, doesn't get too much in the way of you doing what you want to do most of the time. I use it mainly because of gaming, but I can't tell you much about its performance because I have a powerful PC so everything runs just fine.
The start menu was dumbed down recently to a poor KDE clone, but I personally don't mind since I wasn't using it anyway.
I guess I was asking broadly because last I heard anything about it was shortly after release when there was so many missing compatibilities, lots of things broken and unfinished, and everyone was hands down saying don't touch it with a ten foot pole. It sounds like it has gotten a little better, enough for some people to be fine with it, but by the majority of the replies it sounds like it still isn't "done" or is never going to be. All your information was helpful and I haven't read elsewhere so thanks!
I see. If your concern is unfinished features, I don't think you have to worry about that anymore.
What you could do is spin up a virtual machine and test it out there. Here's the official guide on how to do it.
Never will be my friend.
Use Linux.
Can't deal with the complexity of linux for simple things but I do think it's far superior, just not for me. So yeah I should have said vs other windows
Totally agree, battled with Windows 95 M8 (internship) and never wanted that junk on my own hardware.
Even my wife is using Linux. Most users don't use more then an office suite and a browser.
There are mountains of software and hardware that aren’t compatible with Linux.
And when it’s mission critical or work related stuff you can’t afford to mess around with translation layers or virtualization.
I still can't drag files to the task bar to open them with a particular program. Tabs on file explorer are a thing, but they don't behave predictabily so I almost never use them.
Overall still feels like a downgrade, but I'd have updated regardless just to get the little "update available" message to go away
No. I reverted back to Windows 10 Pro for my gaming machine after Windows 11 Pro prompted me that it was "international bubble tea day". Don't get me wrong, I love bubble tea, I just don't care for these distractions when I'm trying to use my PC.
No.
I only changed from windows 11 to Linux mint there over the weekend. I was sick of having to update the laptop every day when I wanted to shut it down
Lol
Bought days gone (game) on steam. Would not launch on windows 11. Tried to get a refund. But it had been two weeks. Launch d it on my steam deck and it worked great.
So. No.... It's sucks.
lol when a windows game wont launch on windows but works on linux. what a time to be alive.
My main gaming rig is 100% linux now. It gets better performance in most games than windows.
That sounds like an issue with Days Gone not Windows. I'm running fedora as my daily but that doesn't change the fact that every game I've played works on Windows out of the box, the same cannot be said for Linux.
It works fine. It's just you. The year of linux is every year.
Ah damn, if there's still a good chunk of games unsupported, its definitely not there yet
He's cherry picking or has some weird edge case issue. I have 20 year old games installed on Windows 11 that run fine. There are no compatibility issues with games on Windows 11
Naw brand new Lenovo legion gaming laptop. Nothing interesting installed on it when I tried this.
Yep. Especially if you are just a regular user who likes gaming. Features like auto HDR and better support for 4k monitors are what made me love it over win 10. There are things that still annoy users but there is also a lot to like. I'm a fan of the centered Taskbar and the improvement to the right click menu.
Also if you are a power user there is always something you can download to fix annoyances. Just like Linux, win 10/7, there is always stuff to tweak and modify. If none of that really is your thing though you will be just fine as it has the easiest experience out of the box atm.
I've been having major issues with my 4k monitor so that's great to know.
I got an ad even though I have all ad service things turned off. It came via my messages tray. It was for some screenshot app Microsoft wanted me to use.
If this doesn't answer your question, I can't be of much help.
It's fine for Windows. I highly recommend coughing up the money for the pro version so you actually control some of the OS, since MS decided to remove things like the group policy editor from regular users. You'll need that if you don't want Windows shoving updates down your throat all the time.
I like the UI more then Windows 10. I don't know why reddit had such a hard on for 10 but 11 is much faster and more responsive than 10 was.
Windows is always faster and more responsive once you reinstall it, it doesn't matter the version lol. I'm due for a proper nuking myself, now that I think about it.
It still gets slower with time? I remember how it used to do that in the 90s too, and you had to reinstall once in a while to get your speed back. Lol.
Maybe I’m just lucky, but I have not experienced Windows 10 or 11 getting slower with time at all.
Did they ever fix the bug with high polling rate mice where the computer would become extremely non responsive if you tried dragging a window? I used Windows 11 for 6 months and they wouldn't fix that issue, so I wiped it clean and installed Windows 10.
Is polling rate the same as dpi? If so I can test it later today because my mouse has adjustable dpi.
No, it's different. The polling rate is how frequently the mouse reports its movement to the OS. What was happening was when you drag a window around the screen, it was drawing the desktop each time the mouse reported back to the OS, 1000Hz, which was apparently too much for my 3080TI to handle.
Razer Synapse lets you change the polling rate, so I was able to lower it to the standard 10Hz and workaround this issue, but I bought an expensive mouse because I wanted more precise mouse movement for gaming.
I only use Windows for gaming, upgraded from 10 to 11 and have zero issues.
I use it on my gaming laptop and I like it. The UI looks more like my phone.
Use tiny11 builder from ntdevlabs on GitHub and Chris Titus's windows toolkit (from GitHub too) to clean things up further.
But if you are putting so much effort might as well use linux
Only reasons for using it are games and work
Still no agenda on the taskbar calendar flyout. So, no.
It’s been pretty alright for me, actually. Both with gaming and development using WSL2.
No and it will never be
From a non hardcore Foss pov (I use linux on an old machine to tinker, but I don't enjoy it. It takes too much energy to get random shit working. My old random Bluetooth usb dongle I had laying around was not compatible with linux? Took me a fucking week to figure that out... ): w11 is as good as windows has ever been.
It does exactly what you want and lets your os mainly stay out of your way of doing other stuff.
All the people complaining about ads and shit: I use Vivaldi and turned off notifications in the side panel. I basically never notice I use windows, except that stuff just works. No fucking around with drivers, random old usb devices just work. All apps I download just work. Never need any serious OS troubleshooting for daily use.
Maybe windows spies on certain things I do? That sucks balls. But I also enjoy watching tiktok on the loo and I still use Facebook to connect with relatives all over the world. It sucks, but I've taken my peace with that fact that true privacy online is gone for average Joe.
In the end it's just metadata. Who cares that instagram knows I like to look at ladies underwear...
You're asking the wrong people. Everyone on here are sweaty for Linux.
Isn’t that the tech tips YouTube guy? What does he have to do with selling 11 windows
I thought it was funny, friend.
hahahahaha, thank you
Linus is the guy in YouTube. Linux is the OS (technically kernel, not OS, but close enough).
Linus Sebastian vs Linus Torvalds
No.
looks at date of publication
That has got to be one of the timeliness answers to a question I've ever seen on here. Thanks!
Yeah, I just saw the article earlier the same day...it was just...fresh.
The bloatware sucks but it takes <30 minutes after install to remove / disable all of it.
A Windows version becomes considered "good" the exact moment a next version is released. No sooner, no later. Those are the rules.
It's fine for Windows, I guess. They've made a bunch of UI improvements that I actually kind of liked. But they still try and force you to setup a Microsoft account when you install. And telemetry is hardly consensual. I think I turned off what I could by rooting around for privacy settings, but it still sends things like crash reports without asking.
I don't trust it. Just use it for games.
Or don't even use it for games. Thanks to recent developments users finally have a choice.
Since the question implies a change of state - I'm going to go with a no.
I have been using Windows 11 pro since it came out and it's fine. I'm not sure why windows is obsessed with trying to replace their older, functional menus with the new style settings apps (which usually just lead back to the old style ones) but I never get reinstalled bloat, ads, or anything remotely like people are complaining about.
For reference I do powershell for a living and use ArchLinux at work, and have windows 11 and arch machines at home, but use windows the most at home.
Not until they bring back the “never combine” taskbar option. What a dumb idea to omit it for years and not expect push back. You had one job Microsoft.
For me the "can't believe they got rid of this" was removing the ability to move the taskbar to either side or to the top.
Remember when windows let you have a SQUARE taskbar in the middle of the screen? How far backwards we've managed to come.
Square taskbar? On which version?
Windows 98, lol. Way way back.
Nooooo so the task bar icons represent applications instead of individual windows? Ugh that's gonna bug me...
Yes 🤦🏻♂️ if you have 16 spreadsheets open on your 16k humongous ultra duper wide, it will collapse all sixteen windows into one tiny icon on the taskbar.
You can fix this with StartAllBack:
https://www.startallback.com/
Looks like they will bring back the option, see https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/hands-on-with-windows-11s-never-combine-taskbar-feature/
I am using this (enabled with ViveTool) and they need to give us an option to standardize the width. It's so fuckin annoying to have your taskbar move around when you change tabs or songs. It's also annoying that short window titles get crunched down to a tiny button.
Oh man, I never even knew they had taken that away. I noped out the moment I heard they had removed the Quick Launch toolbar, but if not for that, the forced combining or tasks would have done the trick.
This might have a "mod" that addresses that: https://github.com/ramensoftware/windhawk. I use this one if that's the same thing https://windhawk.net/mods/taskbar-grouping.
Yeah there was unofficial explorer patch that was available but I just felt like throwing my toys out my pram. In all seriousness, if it’s M$ I expect nothing but the best out of the box, if it’s tinkering I’m after I’m going to main my many linux boxes. For farming all my , erm research activities, you’d think they give a little back. But nooooo…
Depends on what you mean by decent.
For privacy it's shit, it collects a bunch of data that's sent to MS. It also serves text ads on the lock screen, which might annoy you.
They also push their own products too much, like Bing AI and Edge, and sometimes an update can mess with the default apps, wich is annoying.
If you don't care about those things it's fine, doesn't get too much in the way of you doing what you want to do most of the time. I use it mainly because of gaming, but I can't tell you much about its performance because I have a powerful PC so everything runs just fine.
The start menu was dumbed down recently to a poor KDE clone, but I personally don't mind since I wasn't using it anyway.
I guess I was asking broadly because last I heard anything about it was shortly after release when there was so many missing compatibilities, lots of things broken and unfinished, and everyone was hands down saying don't touch it with a ten foot pole. It sounds like it has gotten a little better, enough for some people to be fine with it, but by the majority of the replies it sounds like it still isn't "done" or is never going to be. All your information was helpful and I haven't read elsewhere so thanks!
I see. If your concern is unfinished features, I don't think you have to worry about that anymore.
What you could do is spin up a virtual machine and test it out there. Here's the official guide on how to do it.
Never will be my friend.
Use Linux.
Can't deal with the complexity of linux for simple things but I do think it's far superior, just not for me. So yeah I should have said vs other windows
Totally agree, battled with Windows 95 M8 (internship) and never wanted that junk on my own hardware.
Even my wife is using Linux. Most users don't use more then an office suite and a browser.
There are mountains of software and hardware that aren’t compatible with Linux.
And when it’s mission critical or work related stuff you can’t afford to mess around with translation layers or virtualization.
I still can't drag files to the task bar to open them with a particular program. Tabs on file explorer are a thing, but they don't behave predictabily so I almost never use them.
Overall still feels like a downgrade, but I'd have updated regardless just to get the little "update available" message to go away
No. I reverted back to Windows 10 Pro for my gaming machine after Windows 11 Pro prompted me that it was "international bubble tea day". Don't get me wrong, I love bubble tea, I just don't care for these distractions when I'm trying to use my PC.
No.
I only changed from windows 11 to Linux mint there over the weekend. I was sick of having to update the laptop every day when I wanted to shut it down
Lol
Bought days gone (game) on steam. Would not launch on windows 11. Tried to get a refund. But it had been two weeks. Launch d it on my steam deck and it worked great.
So. No.... It's sucks.
lol when a windows game wont launch on windows but works on linux. what a time to be alive.
My main gaming rig is 100% linux now. It gets better performance in most games than windows.
That sounds like an issue with Days Gone not Windows. I'm running fedora as my daily but that doesn't change the fact that every game I've played works on Windows out of the box, the same cannot be said for Linux.
It works fine. It's just you. The year of linux is every year.
Ah damn, if there's still a good chunk of games unsupported, its definitely not there yet
He's cherry picking or has some weird edge case issue. I have 20 year old games installed on Windows 11 that run fine. There are no compatibility issues with games on Windows 11
Naw brand new Lenovo legion gaming laptop. Nothing interesting installed on it when I tried this.
Yep. Especially if you are just a regular user who likes gaming. Features like auto HDR and better support for 4k monitors are what made me love it over win 10. There are things that still annoy users but there is also a lot to like. I'm a fan of the centered Taskbar and the improvement to the right click menu.
Also if you are a power user there is always something you can download to fix annoyances. Just like Linux, win 10/7, there is always stuff to tweak and modify. If none of that really is your thing though you will be just fine as it has the easiest experience out of the box atm.
I've been having major issues with my 4k monitor so that's great to know.
I got an ad even though I have all ad service things turned off. It came via my messages tray. It was for some screenshot app Microsoft wanted me to use.
If this doesn't answer your question, I can't be of much help.
It's fine for Windows. I highly recommend coughing up the money for the pro version so you actually control some of the OS, since MS decided to remove things like the group policy editor from regular users. You'll need that if you don't want Windows shoving updates down your throat all the time.
I like the UI more then Windows 10. I don't know why reddit had such a hard on for 10 but 11 is much faster and more responsive than 10 was.
Windows is always faster and more responsive once you reinstall it, it doesn't matter the version lol. I'm due for a proper nuking myself, now that I think about it.
It still gets slower with time? I remember how it used to do that in the 90s too, and you had to reinstall once in a while to get your speed back. Lol.
Maybe I’m just lucky, but I have not experienced Windows 10 or 11 getting slower with time at all.
Did they ever fix the bug with high polling rate mice where the computer would become extremely non responsive if you tried dragging a window? I used Windows 11 for 6 months and they wouldn't fix that issue, so I wiped it clean and installed Windows 10.
Is polling rate the same as dpi? If so I can test it later today because my mouse has adjustable dpi.
No, it's different. The polling rate is how frequently the mouse reports its movement to the OS. What was happening was when you drag a window around the screen, it was drawing the desktop each time the mouse reported back to the OS, 1000Hz, which was apparently too much for my 3080TI to handle.
Razer Synapse lets you change the polling rate, so I was able to lower it to the standard 10Hz and workaround this issue, but I bought an expensive mouse because I wanted more precise mouse movement for gaming.
I only use Windows for gaming, upgraded from 10 to 11 and have zero issues.
I use it on my gaming laptop and I like it. The UI looks more like my phone.
Use tiny11 builder from ntdevlabs on GitHub and Chris Titus's windows toolkit (from GitHub too) to clean things up further. But if you are putting so much effort might as well use linux
Only reasons for using it are games and work
Still no agenda on the taskbar calendar flyout. So, no.
It’s been pretty alright for me, actually. Both with gaming and development using WSL2.
No and it will never be
From a non hardcore Foss pov (I use linux on an old machine to tinker, but I don't enjoy it. It takes too much energy to get random shit working. My old random Bluetooth usb dongle I had laying around was not compatible with linux? Took me a fucking week to figure that out... ): w11 is as good as windows has ever been.
It does exactly what you want and lets your os mainly stay out of your way of doing other stuff.
All the people complaining about ads and shit: I use Vivaldi and turned off notifications in the side panel. I basically never notice I use windows, except that stuff just works. No fucking around with drivers, random old usb devices just work. All apps I download just work. Never need any serious OS troubleshooting for daily use.
Maybe windows spies on certain things I do? That sucks balls. But I also enjoy watching tiktok on the loo and I still use Facebook to connect with relatives all over the world. It sucks, but I've taken my peace with that fact that true privacy online is gone for average Joe. In the end it's just metadata. Who cares that instagram knows I like to look at ladies underwear...
You did not disclose your issues. It hasn't changed much since its release, so going by the "yet", no, it's still the same.
It took them 3 years to do one minor UI thing that was at the bottom of my UI complaints.
Windows 11 improves at a pace slow enough that someone else could just hack Windows 10 from scratch and do better and faster.